Politics- Lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee have voted to require intelligence agencies and the
Pentagon to provide an unclassified report to Congress on "unidentified aerial phenomenon." - In particular, senators want to know whether or not "unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries."
- The bill submitted by the Senate Intelligence Committee still has to pass the full Senate and the House.
US lawmakers are demanding intelligence agencies and the Pentagon share information on "unidentified aerial phenomenon," to include whether these reported incidents could be the work of foreign adversaries.
The annual intelligence authorization bill submitted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has yet to pass the full Senate or the House, requires the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense to prepare an unclassified report for Congress on reported incidents, Politico reported Tuesday.
The report on the bill, as Task & Purpose reported, calls for the intelligence community and the military to provide "an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries."
The unclassified report required by the bill should also identify "any incidents or patterns that indicate a potential adversary may have achieved breakthrough aerospace capabilities that could put United States strategic or conventional forces at risk."
Senators explained that they want to know about "any links they have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to US military assets and installations."
The Pentagon declassified three videos of "unidentified aerial phenomena" in late April. The videos had been leaked well before that, with the Navy confirming last September that they were real videos but stating in January that they should not have been released.
The Pentagon said that the videos do not "reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems" and that releasing them "does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena."
Following actions by the Pentagon, the Navy released several incident reports in mid-May from encounters with unidentified flying objects (UFOs), a term that is a generic term for any aerospace asset that is unidentifiable — rather than confirmation as an actual aerial object piloted by extraterrestrials.
"The US needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications," former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who had tens of millions of dollars invested into related investigations, tweeted when the videos were released. "The American people deserve to be informed."
He said that the information released "only scratches the surface" of what is available.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report states that it is "concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the Federal Government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena, despite the potential threat."
The committee, chaired by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, is pushing for the centralization of intelligence gathered from the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and elsewhere.
If the bill passes, it will require reporting to congressional intelligence and armed services committees "on unidentified aerial phenomena (also known as ''anomalous aerial vehicles''), including observed airborne objects that have not been identified" within 180 days of passage.